The authors hypothesized that children's perceptions of their parents' job insecurity mediate the effects of parental job insecurity and layoffs on children's work beliefs and work attitudes. Male and female undergraduate students (N = 134; M age = 18.9 years), as well as their mothers (M age = 47.0 years) and fathers (M age = 49.1 years), participated voluntarily. With structural equation modeling as implemented by LISREL VIII, support for the proposed model was obtained, whereas no support was obtained for a competing model. Moreover, identification with fathers moderated the influence of perceived paternal job insecurity on children's humanistic work beliefs, but no comparable effect emerged for mothers.

Psychometric properties of the newly developed instrument suggest that the application of the Readiness for Change model to return-to-work is relevant to work disability research. The instrument may facilitate the offer of stage-specific services tailored to injured workers' needs, and be used for evaluation of return-to-work interventions.

The experience of injured workers is influenced by multiple systems-the workplace, the healthcare system, and the workers' compensation system. Little research has been conducted on the impact of the workers' compensation system on injured workers' personal experience and on the justice of the workers' compensation process. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a measure of the justice of the compensation process. Injured workers (n=446) with musculoskeletal injuries, in Ontario, Canada, filing a lost-time claim, completed a telephone survey 6 months post-injury. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with two separate samples, and concurrent validity was examined. The four hypothesized factors emerged: distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice factors accounted for 96.3% of the variance. Confirmatory factor analyses had satisfactory fit indices to confirm the initial model. Alpha coefficients ranged from 0.86 to 0.92. Concurrent validity of the scale was supported: relationships of distributive and procedural justice with claim status, claim processing delay, perception of going back to work too soon, duration of work accommodation, and satisfaction with work accommodation were in the expected direction. Workers' experience of the justice of the compensation process can now be measured with a psychometrically sound and theoretically based instrument. This instrument offers researchers the opportunity to focus on the justice of the compensation process of injured workers. It can increase the attention that policy-makers, compensation management, healthcare providers, and other return-to-work stakeholders give to the impact of the compensation system and provide a broadened view of workers' experience.

A model was developed specifying that the number of hours employees spend providing care to or interacting with elderly parents predicts conflict between the roles of employee and caregiver. Interrole conflict was subsequently expected to predict partial absence from work (e.g., arriving late). Seventeen employed eldercare providers completed a daily questionnaire for 20 work days. The data were standardized and pooled, and the proposed model was tested by using structural equation modeling. The proposed model provided a good fit to the data. A competing model that added the direct effects of hours of interacting with and hours of providing care to parents on partial absence provided a significantly better fit. The potential impact of the findings on employees and organizations is discussed.